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SOVEREKNTY OF THE PEOPLE. 


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WILLIAM r>. GLEEXK 

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“ The people alone Iiave an incontestable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to 
institute government, and to reform, alter, or totally change, the same, when their 
protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.” 

COXSTITUTIOX OP' M.V.SSACIIUSKTTS. 




■s BOSTON: 

A. WILLIAMS AND CO., PUBLISHERS, 

100 WASHING I'ON STREET. 

1868. 


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THE 


Sovereignty op the People. 


- 

■ I 


BY 


WILLIAM B/ GREENE. 



“ The people alone have an incontestable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to 
institute government, and to reform, alter, or totally change, the same, when their 
protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.” 

Constitution of Massachusetts. 


^ BOSTON: 
A. WILLIAMS AND CO., 



PUBLISHERS, 


100 WASHINGTON STREET. 


1868. 






Gko. C. Hand & Avekv, ruiNXKRs, Bosion. 


To 

The Illustrious 

^AJOR-pENERAL pEORGE p. JVLcpLELLAN 
THESE PAGES ARE RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED 

BY ONE OF THE MOST FAITHFUL 

ALTHOUGH ONE OF THE LEAST MERITORIOUS 

OF HIS FORMER SUBORDINATES. 






THE SOVEREIGNTY OF THE PEOPLE. 


The word authority ” occurs in the Constitution of the 
United States five times: the word “ sovereignty’’ o'ccurs in it 
not once. 

The Constitution of Massachusetts says expressly, The 
people inhabiting the territory formerly called the Province 
of Massachusetts Bay do hereby solemnly and mutually agree 
with each other to form themselves into a /ree, sovereign, and 
independent body-politic, or State, by the name of the Com¬ 
monwealth of Massachusetts.” And again : The people of 
this Commonwealth have the sole and exclusive right of gov¬ 
erning themselves, as a/ree, sovereign, and independent State ; 
and do, and forever hereafter shall, exercise and enjoy every 
power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not, or may not be 
hereafter, by them expressly delegated to the United States 
of America in Congress assembled.” Nevertheless, and as if 
to make manifest a want of foresight in the framers of her 
Constitution, the people of Massachusetts have, in the exercise 
of their original sovereignty, expressly delegated ‘^powers, 
jurisdictions, and rights,” not only to the United States in 
Congress assembled,” but also to the United States as repre¬ 
sented by the executive and judiciary departments of the ex¬ 
isting Federal Government, — to say nothing of the Federal- 
Constitution-amending power, which is given, substantially, not 
to the Federal Government at all, but to three-fourths of the 
several States in their separate sovereign capacities. 

Sovereignty is possessed by the United States ; and it is pos¬ 
sessed also by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Th^ 
Commonwealth may, for instance, in the exercise of its sove¬ 
reign power, try, convict, and hang persons who commit mur¬ 
der within its territorial limits ; no throne, dominion, principal- 



6 


ity, or power, other than the State itself, having any thing to 
do or to say in the matter. And again, in like manner, the 
United States may,'in the exercise of their sovereignty, and 
independently of the will of all opposing human authorities 
whatsoever, try, convict, and hang pirates. 

Sovereignty, as it exists in God, is simple and indivisible ; 
but, as it exists among men, it is multiple, and separable into 
parts. Human sovereignty is defined by its object, and by 
the sphere of its activity. It by no means follows, therefore, 
because Massachusetts has parted with the treaty-making 
power, because she cannot send ambassadors to foreign courts 
or try pirates captured on the high seas, that she has parted 
with her sovereignty. There are many sovereign powers 
other than that of hanging murderers, which the Common¬ 
wealth of Massachusetts has never yet surrendered. 

The Sultan of Turkey shares the sovereignty of the empire 
with the religious power of the State; and the Sheik ul Islam 
can dethrone him at any moment. The sovereignty of the 
Emperor of China is hedged in, confined, and limited by 
the national etiquette, which is insuperable. Neither the 
United States nor the Commonwealth of Massachusetts pos¬ 
sess absolute sovereignty : no body-politic either does, ever 
did, or ever can possess absolute sovereignty. 

When, where, and how did the sovereignty of the State of 
Massachusetts originate ? What was the process of its growth ?' 
Sovereignty is a fact, and not a moral maxim : in investigations 
respecting it, therefore, we must follow simple historical meth¬ 
ods, and be careful not to lose ourselves in ethical speculations. 
We are informed by the records of the time, that, when the 
American Revolution broke out, the leaders of the movement 
at once shut up the court-houses, because the then acting 
judges administered justice in the name of the King of Eng¬ 
land. The administration of justice between man and man 
came therefore, of necessity, in Massachusetts, to be adminis¬ 
tered, in the early stages of the Revolution, by self-constituted 
authorities. Insurrectionary committees organized themselves 
spontaneously to meet the want occasioned by the sudden col¬ 
lapsing of the legal government of the province. Self-consti¬ 
tuted authorities took control of the towns and counties, raised 


7 


troops and money, and entered into correspondence with each 
other. In what other course could the Revolution have pos¬ 
sibly run? The question was one of violent transformation, 
not one of peaceful evolution. The ‘ Revolutionary Govern¬ 
ment suppressed the Royal Government, as such, and, in the 
nature of things, could derive no authority from it: neither 
did the Revolution derive original authority from a vote of the 
people, since the people were not regularly consulted respect¬ 
ing it until after it had become a fixed fact. Besides, the ma¬ 
chinery for taking the vote of the people was not, at the time, 
in working order. The sovereignty of the Commonwealth of 
Massachusetts had its birth in the just and necessary usurpations 
of the vigilance committees that initiated the American Revolu¬ 
tion : it derived its origin, not from the colonial power, nor 
from the charters of the English king, but from the inherent 
and spontaneous force of the armed insurrection. It was born 
and nursed in revolution. It was founded in might; and it 
vindicated its existence by the persuasive eloquence of the 
naked sword. These facts are signified by the motto of the 
Commonwealth, — Ense petit placidam sub libertate quietem; 
and also by the sword which is depicted over the State arms. 
The loyalists of the Revolution — many of them peaceable and 
law-loving inhabitants of the province — had the right to be 
tarred and feathered ; the right to have their property confis¬ 
cated, and to be themselves banished from the country: but 
they had few other rights which the patriotic portion of the 
community felt called upon to respect. No one thought of 
asking for their votes. We distort the fair proportions of his¬ 
tory when we dress up our grandfathers in the costume of 
Arcadian shepherds, and forget the violence, new rum, and 
exciting eloquence, by which the unanimity of Massachusetts 
opinion was brought about. A sergeant who for a long time 
commanded the guard at Washington’s headquarters, and after¬ 
wards grew very old in meditating on the history of his coun¬ 
try, told the writer of these pages that the independence of 
America would never have been achieved had there been no 
rum. Our informant did not wish to intimate that Washing¬ 
ton drank rum: on the contrary, he aflSrmed that the Father 
of his Country had no noticeable vice, except the one of swear- 



8 


ing like a trooper when suddenly irritated. The fact that our 
liberties were baptized in rum seems to be well attested; and 
yet it is seldom of never alluded to by our Fourth-of-July 
orators. American institutions, and the (so-called) modern 
reforms, flow from opposite and conflicting principles; and for 
this reason it is that these reforms are so often brought up, 
all standing, by the constitutions and laws of the country. 

When the sovereignty of Massachusetts came to be sanc¬ 
tioned in a written Constitution, the instrument was submitted 
for approval, not to the natural people, but to the legal people, 
of the State; for the Constitution of the Commonwealth was 
adopted by the active and energetic “ males ’’ of twenty-one 
years of age and upwards, the vote of the women and children 
not being taken. The loyal element was also first eliminated 
from the population through the effects of war, banishments, 
confiscations, and terror; and the voting males saw to it 
that the word ‘‘ male was put in the Constitution as a re¬ 
striction upon future voting. Are not the women of Massa¬ 
chusetts people ? Are they not, indeed, a pre-eminently in¬ 
teresting class among the people ? Who are the people of the 
State ? From what source does a bare majority of the males 
acquire a right to bind the minority of the males, and the 
whole mass of the women? Have majorities, like kings, a di¬ 
vine right to govern wrong? There is no ground for the affir¬ 
mation that the sovereignty of Massachusetts finds its origin 
in the express consent of the people : it has its origin in force. 
With what face can we tell a well-informed and thinking 
woman that the sovereignty of the State finds its origin and 
sanction in a formal contract to which she is an actually as¬ 
senting party? How can we tell her that she coi^sciously and* 
freely deeded away a part of her individual sovereignty in 
favor of the State; and that, in obeying the State, she really 
obeys herself only ? She knows better. She obeys the laws, 
as we all do, not because siie has consented to obey them, 
but because they are reasonable and just, and because the 
Massachusetts magistrate beareth not the sword in vain. It 
may, nevertheless, be safely affirmed, that there is not a vot¬ 
ing or non-voting citizen now living in the State, either male 
or female, who desires to have the Constitution abrogated, or 




who even desires to have it amended by any processes other 
than such as are strictly peaceable, regular, and not inconsis¬ 
tent with the provisions of the instrument itself. In a con¬ 
structive but very practical sense, therefore, the Constitution of 
Massachusetts is now a solemn compact,'^ by which the whole 
people covenants with each citizen, and each citizen with the 
whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for 
the common good; ” each citizen, male or female, feeling that 
the guaranties contained in the Bill of Rights are guaranties 
of individual sovereignty, and limitations of State sovereign¬ 
ty ; and that the government of the State really and trul}'' 
exists for the protection of honest persons against the 
machinations and evil deeds of knaves and scoundrels. Un¬ 
fortunately, it is impossible to say as much, with truth, for 
the Constitution of the United States; since more than one- 
third part of the people of the country, North and South, 
for one reason or another, reject it as unjust and oppres¬ 
sive. The reason of the difference is this : The Constitu¬ 
tion of Massachusetts is complete and simple, easily under¬ 
stood, and the people of the State have grown up to it; while 
the Constitution of the United States is complex, dependent 
on the course of events for its ultimate completion, impossible 
to be understood without an amount of study which few per¬ 
sons are willing to bestow upon it, and still far in advance of 
the federal people who govern under it. 

The written Constitution of the United States begins with 
the singular statement, We, the people of the United States, 
in order to form a more perfect union, &c., do ordain and es¬ 
tablish this Constitution for the United States of America.^^ 
This declaration is directly contradicted by historical facts. 
The Constitution of the United States has never yet been 
ratified either by the natural or by the legal people of the 
whole country, voting as members of a single body-politic, or 
by the natural or legal peoples of the several States. - It was 
ratified by convenlio7is in the several States, each State adopt¬ 
ing the Constitution separately; so that the instrument comes, 

* The Constitution of Massachusetts describes itself as “ an original, explicit, and 
solemn COMPACT,” which the people, “deliberately and peaceably, without force, 
fraud, or surprise,” made, not with any government or state, but “with each other.” 


10 


in fact, to be in the nature of a compact, or covenant, between 
sovereign States. The legal peoples of the several States (not 
the natural peoples) elected delegates to the conventions ; and 
the conventions (not the legal peoples) ratified the Constitu¬ 
tion. To submit an instrument to the people for approval, and 
to submit it to the representatives or delegates of the people, 
are two very different things; and it is generally conceded, 
that, if the Federal Constitution had been directly submitted 
for ratification to the legal peoples of the States, the chances 
were that the whole project would have fallen through for the 
time. 

The submission of the Constitution to the federal people 
for approval was impracticable in the nature of things ; be¬ 
cause, before the adoption of the Federal Constitution, the fed¬ 
eral people, as such, had no actual being 

The ratification of the instrument was brought about with 
great difficulty, in the face of virulent opposition; and was 
finally determined by intrigues and compromises in the con¬ 
ventions. Moreover, the Constitution, when finally ratified, 
was ratified with proposed amendments, in the nature of a Bill 
of Rights, guaranteeing the reserved sovereignty of the States 
and of citizens ; and among these amendments was the one 
proposed by Massachusetts, and now a part of the Constitu¬ 
tion, which reads thus: The powers not delegated to the 
United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the 
States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the peo¬ 
ple.” 

The clause of the Constitution which prescribes the man¬ 
ner of its own ratification reads as follows: Tlie ratifications 
of the conventions of nine States shall be sufficient for the 
establishment of this Constitution between the States so rati, 
fying the same; ” and this clause is the closing article of the 
original Constitution. Thus the instrument, speaking as it 
were from the mouth of the cannon, commences by saying. 

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more 
perfect union, &c., do ordain and estahlishihh Constitution for 
the United States of Amerieaf^ and ends meekly, and on a 
more subdued key, by submitting the project to the ratification- 
of the several States, and by declaring tliat the Constitution 


11 


shall be established, not over all the United States of America, 
but between such of the States as may see fit, in the exercise 
of their acknowledged sovereignty, to ratify the same. The 
Constitution, having been ratified by eleven of the thirteen 
original States, began to be put in operation in September, 
1788. The first Congress under the Constitution met in 
March, 1789. President Washington was sworn into office 
on the 30th of April, 1789. North Carolina came into the 
Union in November, 1789; and Rhode Island not until May, 
1790. 

The Federal Constitution is, therefore, a subsisting compact^ 
between sovereign States. It is a legal instrument, and, as 
such, is to be distinguished from the Federal Government that 
was organized, and put in operation, under its provisions ; for 
the Federal Government is no mere compact, — no mere legal 
instrument, — but a government proper, having direct rela¬ 
tions with the individuals wdio compose the peoples of the sev¬ 
eral States. No sovereignty was granted by the several 
States to the United States and to the Federal Government; 
for sovereignty, which is self-derived by its nature, cannot be 
conveyed by grant. The States granted to the United States 
certain powers w^hich carry with them the elements of might; 
and the United States, in the strength of these powers, as¬ 
sumed sovereignty ; and the States conferred these powers upon 
the United States for the express purpose and in the full ex¬ 
pectation that sovereignty would be assumed by the Federal 
Government. It is precisely because sovereignty cannot be 
granted, that the Constitution, which is mainly a grant of 
powers, makes no mention of sovereignty. Sovereignty 
(under God, who is the sole fountain of might and dominion) 
original^ self-derived authority to decree, to judge, and to do. 
Sovereignty, if not a self-asserting, self-sufficing, self-vindicat¬ 
ing fact, is nothing. 

In the United States, the legal people (as is, indeed, the case 
everywhere else) constitute the actual body-politic, or State, 
and hold the sovereignty. In America, as in France, the whole 
mass of the adult male citizens, with certain specified excep¬ 
tions, are voters, and thus repositaries of the sovereign powerj 
In England, about one-seventh part only of the adult males 




12 


are voters; that is to say, legal people. In some countries, 
the whole mass of the titled nobility have a share in the sov¬ 
ereign power, and constitute the legal people. In other coun¬ 
tries, the king and the peers of the realm constitute the legal 
people, the rest of the population having no voice in State 
affairs. In still other countries, the ruling despot constitutes, 
by himself alone, the governing power; and, when he puts on 
his crown, the whole legal people is covered. Sovereignty is 
prevailing force, and subsists by divine (perhaps diabolical) 
right: it is violent, heroic, extra-human, inexplicable. Sov¬ 
ereignty is self-derived authority. 

The sovereignty of the United States being in the hands 
of the federal legal people, and sovereignty consisting in 
original, efficacious ability to decree, to judge, and to execute, 
what guaranty had the legal peoples of the several States, be¬ 
holding the rise and culmination of the federal sovereignty, 
that their own separate sovereignties would not be by it ulti¬ 
mately swallowed up? Avery simple one, but one that ought 
to be effectual; which has been effectual hitherto, and which 
probably will be effectual for many generations. ' The Consti¬ 
tution requires, on the one hand, that ‘‘ the senators and repre¬ 
sentatives, whether of the Federal or of the State legislatures, 
and all executive and judicial officers both of the United 
States and of the several States, shall he hound hy oath or affir¬ 
mation to support the Constitution of the United States ; ” and, 
on the other hand, we find in the instrument to be thus sup¬ 
ported the following express provision: The powers not del¬ 
egated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibit¬ 
ed by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, 
or to the people.’^ ^ 

It is not reasonable to suppose that the officials administer¬ 
ing the three co-ordinate departments of the Federal Govern¬ 
ment will ever concur in simultaneously perjuring themselves. 
Men are no worse now than they always were: some of them 
are downright knaves; more of them are men of thorough 
and tried honesty; and the great majority are neither knaves 
nor honest men, but persons who respect integrity, and intend 
to do right whenever their private and family interests, ambi¬ 
tions, and necessities permit. In general, we may safel}’’ 


P‘ 


13 


place confidence in the verdict of an ordinary man whose 
judgment is not warped by interest or ambition; and in four 
cases out of five, where men are called upon to act, in com¬ 
mon as well as political life, their judgments are determined 
by considerations of the general welfare, because no others 
happen to be present to their minds. Other things being 
equal, all men are interested, and know themselves to be in¬ 
terested, in the supremacy of order and of right. 

If the two houses of Congress, who have naturally the ini¬ 
tiative of evil, allow themselves to be carried away by passion 
and excitement, so that they pass unwholesome laws, the 
President is impelled by natural pride of office, and a regard 
for his own historical record, to interpose his veto for the pro¬ 
tection of the people.* If the President catches the madness 
of the House and Senate, and makes common cause with them, • 
or if Congress goes over his veto by a two-thirds vote, the 
Supreme Court stands in the way to correct the evil, if there 
be any; and it is not to be' expected that the three depart¬ 
ments of the federal sovereignty — the department which 
decrees, the department which judges, and the department 
which executes — will all go crazy at the same moment of 
time. Moreover, if the conduct of the Federal Government 
should become utterly reprehensible, the people may still fall 
back upon their State governments (which have the power, 
and generally the will, to stay acts of federal usurpation, and 
moderate their effects), and the root of the evil may be re¬ 
moved by a dismissal, in a regular and constitutional way, of 
the trespassing federal officers. 

In theory, the government of a free people is not one 
which shall in all circumstances govern, but one that shall 
effectually govern while it is maintaining right against wrong, 
and shall begin to fall in pieces as soon as it begins to main¬ 
tain wrong against right. No country is truly free whose 

* The Constitution of the United States requires that, “ before he enter on the 
execution of his office, the President shall take the following oath or affirmation: 

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will fiiithfully execute the office of President 
of the United States; and will, to (he best of my ability,preserve, protect, and defend the 
Constitution of the United States." Thus the President is especially set apart, in con¬ 
tradistinction from all other officers, as the sworn custodian and conservator of the 
Constitution of the United States. 

2 


14 


constitution does not furnish the citizen witli protection 
against the wrong-doing of other citizens, and also guarantee 
him against the wrong-doing of the government itself. No 
oppressor is so intolerable as an oppressive government; for 
the private oppressor acts with his own force only, while the 
governmental oppressor acts with the irresistible force of the 
whole people. 

In the individual man, the three elements of sovereignty 
(the practical and the higher reason, the will, and the con¬ 
science) are united in a single person: and it is for this reason 
that few individual men are competent to meet severe and 
trying temptations. But the Federal Government is especially 
organized to meet and to outride great crises, the three ele¬ 
ments of its sovereignty being lodged in separate and inde¬ 
pendent bodies, and administered by different persons. Thus 
the Federal Government is rendered weak to do wrong, and 
powerful to do right: for, as soon as it begins to go wrong, it 
naturally begins to be divided against itself, and the three 
great wheels of its machinery exhaust their momentum, or 
wear each other out, in their friction against each other; 
while, as soon as it begins to go right, all the parts work har¬ 
moniously, and exhaust their full strength on the object of 
their action. No country is securely free if its governmental 
machine is not so organized that it shall be struck with paraly¬ 
sis whenever it becomes guilty of usurpation upon the re¬ 
served sovereignty of the people; for it is clearly demonstrated 
by the history of the world, that the mere right of insurrection 
is no adequate guaranty to subjects oppressed by Machiavel¬ 
lian rulers. 

The Federal Government of the United Stated is triple-head¬ 
ed, and not single-headed.'^ The government of England is 
single-headed. The average American man, if he have made 
no special study of American institutions, is naturally, by the 

* The Constitution of Massachusetts states, with great energy, the American theory 
of the necessity of a threefold distribution of governmental powers. It says, “ In the 
government of this Commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise 
the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: the executive shall never exer¬ 
cise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: the judicial shall never 
exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may 

BE A GOVERNMENT OF LAWS, AND NOT OF MEN.” 


15 


force of historical circumstances, on the level of English civili¬ 
zation : and the ideas which lie at the foundation of English 
institutions spontaneously present themselves to his mind as 
true, and as in accordance with what he calls common sense; 
that is to say, with his unreasoned, instinctive intuitions. 
Moreover, since the average man usually considers all that he 
does not know as not worth knowing, every thing which is 
complex and not simple, every thing that cannot be under¬ 
stood without an expenditure of patient study, is at once 
rejected by him as false, or at least unpractical. 

England is a royal emporocracy (or government of shop¬ 
keepers), of which the queen is sovereign in name, but not in 
fact, and of which the persons who manage the parliament are 
the real masters. The aristocracy of England is no longer a 
true aristocracy as it once was, since it no longer represents a 
military caste, but owes its position to mere political privilege 
and wealth; and it ma}^ be remarked, that it was never an in¬ 
tellectual caste. In England, the correlative of aristocracy is 
not reverence and devotion as it is in countries where real 
aristocracy exists, but is sheer flunkeyism. An English lord 
is no more a real noble than the English queen is a real queen. 
The royal family of England is what it is by act of parliament; 
and the aristocracy has become what it is, not by prowess in 
arms, but by fraudulent encroachments on the liberties of the 
people. It is not the fashion, at the present day, for English 
aristocrats to boast of their virtuous poverty, and to base their 
claims upon the sole historic merits of their families, their 
own innate nobility of character, and the Spartan simplicity of 
their lives. The revolutions which have taken .place in Eng¬ 
land have had the effect to sweep aside the sword, the tlirone, 
and the altar, and to leave nothing standing as a public in¬ 
stitution except the fire-proof safe. The altar, it is true, con¬ 
tinues to exist, but it exists only as an agent of the strong box; 
and the same may be said of the throne and the sword. If 
we, in this country, subordinate the executive and judicial 
departments of our government to the legislative branch, ren¬ 
dering the government single-headed, and placing the sover¬ 
eignty in Congress alone, we shall at once come under the 
absolute rule of party leaders, be ground by party machine- 


16 


ry, and find ourselves, in a very few years, saddled with a 
worthless aristocracy like that of England, and differing only 
from that of England by the lack of time-honored titles. What 
England has accomplished in the way of progress out of des¬ 
potism, we may easily accomplish, in the way of retrogression 
towards despotism, by a single act of supreme folly. But we 
cannot hope, if we are willing to be thus false to our mission, 
to enjoy the quiet and stability, small as it is, which has fallen 
to the lot of England. Our country is too wide, and the agri¬ 
cultural interests too predominant, to admit of our being gov¬ 
erned, for any length of time, by Carthaginian and Venetian 
institutions. No police force would suffice to keep the parts 
of the country situated at the circumference in subordination 
to a congressional committee sitting at the centre. Local self- 
government would assert itself ever 3 "where as force ; and 
there is no central force, furnished in the nature of the case, 
competent to put local self-government down. Credit, or 
tige, which is the spring and regulator of emporocratic govern¬ 
ment, would cease to exist; for no one would have faith in 
the permanence of the new institutions. The public debt, 
which Congress would endeavor to wield as a sword for its 
own purposes, would become worthless. Americans can never 
forget that they have rights, and will not fail in the long-run 
to attempt their vindication ; and this is a difficulty not expe¬ 
rienced in England, since Englishmen fight, never fur their 
rights, but always for their privileges. 

Intelligent and generally well-read persons are to be met 
with every day, who know nothing except from vague instinct, 
either of the written Constitution of the United States or of 
the unwritten Constitution of England, and who suppose that 
these two constitutions are, at bottom, very much the same 
thing. Assuming that the Federal Government is single¬ 
headed, that the sovereignty inheres exclusively in Congress, 
that Congress is an American duplicate of the British Parlia¬ 
ment, and that the voice of Congress is the authentic voice of 
the American people, they inquire why Congress does not, in 
difficult cases, inaugurate new interpretations of the Consti¬ 
tution, and change it by novel precedents; or why they do 
not change it by actual legislation. They are not aware 



17 


that all precedents against the written Constitution of the 
United States are null; that all legislation against it is void; 
and that it must be changed, if changed at all, by a vote 
of three-fourths of the States. They are not aware that it is 
the Constitution, and not Congress, which speaks the authen¬ 
tic voice of the people; Congress being but one branch of 
the Government, on the same level with the Executive and the 
Supreme Court, and representing the people to the same ex¬ 
tent — neither more nor less — that the people are represented 
by the President (who is, like Congress, elected by the peo¬ 
ple) or by the Judiciary (which is appointed pursuant to 
provisions of the Constitution). There is no end to the idi¬ 
otic perversions of the Constitution, perpetrated by intelligent 
men who know the instrument by hearsay only. One will tell 
you, that, because the word “ slave does not occur in the in¬ 
strument, slavery could never have been guaranteed by it; 
as though things are any the less true when men are ashamed 
to confess thorn in monosyllabic words, and as though they 
cannot be as well expressed by exact description as by Saxon 
names. Another objects that the words persons held to ser¬ 
vice or labor under the laws of a State ’’ may signify appren¬ 
tices and criminals as well as slaves. Very true; but does it 
therefore follow that these words may not also signify slaves, 
as well as apprentices and convicts? Another says slavery 
is immoral in itself, and therefore cannot be guaranteed by a 
constitution which is the embodiment of all that is right, and 
of nothing that is wrong; to which the obvious answer is, 
that the Constitution is the work of men, and may possibly 
contain much that is wrong. But, to save space, let us state 
the sequel of these objections in the form of questions and 
answers. Qtc. If any thing clearly wrong is sanctioned by the 
Constitution, are we not bound, by the higher law, to disre¬ 
gard the Constitution in that respect? Ans. Yes; but if you 
find the Constitution to be a compact with death, and an 
agreement with hell,” you must be very careful not to take an 
oath to support it. Qn. How, then, can honest men hold office 
under it, if they are not to swear to support it, since the tak¬ 
ing of the oath is obligatory upon all Federal and State offi¬ 
cers? Moreover, if honest men, through scruples of con- 


18 


science, leave offices vacant, how do they know that unscrupu¬ 
lous persons will not obtain those offices and use power and 
influence for sinister purposes? Again: if all upright men 
scruple at taking the oath, what shall prevent the whole power 
of the government from falling into the hands of scoundrels ? 
Am. Before, you talked morality: now you are talking in¬ 
iquity. If you, from conscientious scruples, refuse honor and 
promotion, you will derive from that very act an influence for 
good which you never could derive from official position. Be¬ 
sides, the path of perjury is never tlie path of duty. “You 
cannot serve God and Mammon.’’ Qu. Do you think it would 
be just and fair to the State of Massachusetts to have the 
State of Georgia come back into the Union, counting her non¬ 
voting blacks as a part of her represented population ? and 
would not this very contingency occur if conscientious peo¬ 
ple should refrain from taking part in governmental action? 
Am. Certainly, it would be fair to Massachusetts, all of whose 
population is represented ; and it would be unfair — if unfair 
at all — only to the non-voting blacks, who are, by the suppo¬ 
sition, to be represented by delegates not of their own choice. 
Qu. Do you, then, confess that the negroes ought to possess 
the elective franchise ? Am. Certainly : under due regula¬ 
tions adapted to the condition of a race just emerging from 
barbarism, such of the negroes ought to be allowed to vote as 
show themselves competent to be intrusted with the welfare 
of the non-voting natural people. Qu. You approve, then, of 
legislation by Congress, giving the negroes a right to vote ? 
Am. No: because every Congressman who votes for any thing 
of the kind perjures himself, if he understands the Constitution 
in accordance with the usual interpretation; for the Constitu¬ 
tion, which every Congressman is bound by oath to support, 
gives Congress no authority to interfere with the elective fran¬ 
chise in the States. Qu. You admit, then, that every man is 
to obey the oath as he understands it ? Am. Without doubt. 
Qu. Suppose the Congressman says he understands the Con¬ 
stitution to give Congress power to regulate the elective fran¬ 
chise in the States? Am. As human nature is now constitut¬ 
ed, all judgments that are conceivable are possible; but the 
presumption would be, either that the man has not read the 


19 


Constitution, or that he has forgotten it, or that he lies. If a 
man says he understands black to be white, it by no means 
necessarily follows that he does, in reality, so understand it. 
Qu. Suppose he puts his interpretation on the ground of the 
duty of the Federal Government to guarantee to the several 
States of the Union governments republican in form? Ans. A 
government republican in form is not necessarily a govern¬ 
ment extravagantly democratic in substance. Ninety-nine out 
of a hundred of all the republics in the world have been based 
on slavery; and very few of them, if any, have ever adopted 
universal suffrage. Universal suffrage has never yet existed, 
even in Massachusetts. Universal suffrage, female suffrage 
excepted, is not the historical definition of the word ^M'epubli- 
canism.’^ Qu. Suppose he puts it on the ground of the power 
of the United States to make foreign conquests ? Ans. There 
is no clause in the Constitution authorizing the Federal Gov¬ 
ernment, by making foreign conquests within the limits of its 
own territory, to acquire power to determine the qualifications 
of voters in the States. Such power, if acquired at all, must 
either be acquired by usurpation, or be conferred by the free 
consent, without force, fraud, or surprise,” of three-fourths 
of the States. Qu. Are you not very unreasonable and un¬ 
practical? Is it wise to totally ignore the existing condition 
of the country, and the party necessities of the present crisis? 
You will, at least, admit that a President who disappoints the 
expectations of the party which elected him is guilty of trea¬ 
son, and liable to be deposed from office ? Ans. It would be a 
good plan for men, liable to be called on to take an oath to sup¬ 
port the Constitution, to prepare themselves by fasting and 
prayer for the study of the instrument. Qu. Do you regard 
a sneer as an argument? Have you no respect for the great 
masses of the loyal people ? and are you willing to strengthen 
the hands of Copperheads? Ans. We do not intend either to 
sneer or to scoff'; and we reply with all the patience we have 
at command. We suppose a loyal person to be, as the word 
implies, a law-abiding person ; and we certainly respect all law- 
abiding persons. As for the term “ Copperhead,” in its appli¬ 
cation to human beings, it is a word unknown to the Constitu¬ 
tion and laws ; and we are ignorant of its precise meaning. 


A 


20 


If to oppose official perjury is to strengthen the hands of Cop¬ 
perheads, we have the honor to plead guilty to the charge. 

The government of the United States has no legal or con¬ 
stitutional right to demand loyalty ’’ of the citizen, under¬ 
standing the word “ loyalty in the sense it has recently 
acquired in this country. If it be ‘MisloyaU’ to advocate 
the traditional States-rights theory of our government, then 
both Jefferson and Madison were traitors. Every citizen has 
a right to talk against either the existing or any other admin¬ 
istration, against the existing or any other congress ; and also 
a right to use every lawful means at his command, either to 
bring the administration into discredit, or to render the policy 
of Congress unpopular and odious. Every man, if he rest 
within legal limits, has a right to thwart the government if 
he can. Were not Moses and Aaron disloyal in Egypt? Was 
not Washington a red-handed rebel? 

The word “ nationality,’’ like the word “ sovereignty,” shines 
in the Federal Constitution, from the fact of its not being 
found there at all. It is in the destiny of the United States 
to some day become a nation ; but they are not, so far as their 
internal relations are concerned, a nation as yet. Our nation: 
ality has not ceased to be purely artificial. It has not yet, by 
any means, taken upon itself the form of a growth of nature, 
but subsists solely as a product of the deliberate and con¬ 
scious will of the legal peoples of the several States. As 
the work of man, it is liable at any moment to disclose here¬ 
tofore unseen and absurd defects. The work of the federal 
people has hardly begun; and we shall have, in the future, 
many occasions for the assembling of constitutional conven¬ 
tions of all the States for the purpose of conforming the re¬ 
quirements of the Constitution to the conditions of nature. 

The United States acquire none of their powers, as against 
any of the States, or as against any of their citizens, under the 
laws of nations, or in virtue of any federal nationality, but 
acquire all the powers they possess, without exception, from 
the Constitution only. It is a matter of wonder that candid 
and intelligent men should see their way clear to talk, as many 
of them do, in view of the tenth amendment of the Constitu¬ 
tion, about the incidental rights ” which the United States 


21 


possess because they are “ a nation.’’ They are deceived, it is 
to be presumed, by an analogy which does not hold good in the 
applications they make of it. Nations are of natural growth, 
and possess natural rights as nations; which rights are instinc¬ 
tively recognized by men, and are enumerated and recited in 
the books on the law of nations. The State of Massachusetts, 
for example, is a nation, exercising natural rights as such; 
and those rights are recognized and restricted in her Constitu¬ 
tion. The written Constitution of Massachusetts would be 
very imperfect if it did not contain a Declaration of Rights, re¬ 
citing the natural and inalienable liberties of the citizen as 
anterior and superior to the natural right of the State. But 
the United States, so far as they are a nation at all, are, as 
yet, an artificial, and not a natural nation, having rights which 
are not natural, but artificial, acquired to them by special 
grants, and not inherent in them by the necessity of their na¬ 
ture. There is no present absolute necessity for a Declaration 
of Rights, reciting the reserved rights of the States, and of-the 
citizens of the States, as a component part of the Federal Con¬ 
stitution ; although a necessity for such a Declaration of Rights 
will one of these days arise: for the United States have, as 
yet, no natural rights against the exaggeration of which States 
and citizens should be on their guard. All these questions 
seem to be questions of mere history, and by no means of dif¬ 
ficult solution. The origin of the Federal Government is not 
yet lost in the night of time. 

When the federal people of the United States shall have at¬ 
tained its majority, when every man and woman throughout 
the wide extent of the whole country shall have accepted the 
Federal Constitution in his or her heart with the unanimity 
shown by the people of Massachusetts in accepting their spe¬ 
cial Constitution, the federal people will exist for itself; the 
Federal Constitution will become a contract binding on all 
citizens, whether they have or have not taken the oath to sup¬ 
port it; and the United States will become a nation. When 
that time arrives, it will be true practically, as it is now true 
in theory only, that the federal people of the United States 
ordain and establish the Federal Constitution for the United 
States of America. 


.s 


22 


In theory, but not yet practically, the sovereign independ¬ 
ent States of Anglo-Saxon North America transfer, by a con¬ 
stitutional compact, their separate and distinct rights, prerog¬ 
atives, and powers from themselves, as separate States, to 
themselves (and not to the Federal Government), as the United 
States. To prepare the way for the real advent of the federal 
people, each State actually and effectually surrendered, in 
adopting the Constitution-amending power, all its prerogatives 
and powers into the hands of the United States (not the Fed¬ 
eral Government), with the sole exception of its right to equal 
representation in the Senate ; three-fourths of the States being 
authorized, the will of the minority of the States notwithstand¬ 
ing, to change the Constitution of the United States in every 
particular, the equal representation of the States in the Sen¬ 
ate alone excepted. The power of three-fourths of the States 
hath this full extent. If three-fourths of the States should see 
fit to re-establish slavery in all the States, Massachusetts would 
be bound by her covenant-obligation to acquiesce in the 
change. Of course there would be fighting — and there ought 
to be fighting — if any outrage of this kind should be attempt¬ 
ed ; and any State which should bestow a good cannonading 
on the United States, as a justifiable admonition that they were 
going outrageously wrong, would, in such case, confer a gen¬ 
eral benefit upon the whole people. Again: if three-fourths of 
the States see fit to strike out the clause of the Constitu¬ 
tion guaranteeing republican forms of governments, and pre¬ 
fer to establish imperial governments in all the States and 
at Washington, they have the constitutional power and right 
to carry their will into effect. But this power is given to 
three-fourths of the States acting in their Constitution-amend¬ 
ing capacity, and not at all to the Federal Government, much 
less (if less be possible) to Congress, a single branch of that 
government. Slavery can neither be established in the States 
by act of Congress, nor be abolished in them by proclamation 
of the President. The States have reserved the Constitution- 
amending power to themselves, confiding it neither to the 
President nor to Congress. As a woman, by the contract of 
marriage, takes a particular man for better or worse, — per¬ 
haps for worse without the better, — so each State, by the 


23 


constitutional compact, takes the other States for better or 
worse; and three-fourths of those States have always the power 
of making the contract for worse at their pleasure. And as 
Avomen, notwithstanding the marriage contract, sometimes 
fight their husbands, so it is possible that individual States 
may sometimes fight the United States, in spite of their cove¬ 
nant obligation. 

There is no provision made in the Federal Constitution 
either for the secession of disaffected States or for the dis¬ 
solution of the Union. No State can, therefore, laAvfully be 
liberated from its contract except by an amendment of the 
Constitution, approved by three-fourths of all the States; and 
any State which undertakes of its own motion, Avithout justi¬ 
fiable cause and without previous agreement with the other 
States, to go out of the Union, renders itself liable to be re¬ 
strained by force from consummating its act of secession. 
Not that the State itself, as such, can be directly coerced; for 
the Constitution, as it stands, gives no authority .to the Fede¬ 
ral Government to coerce a State: but the Federal Govern¬ 
ment rightfully claims the allegiance of all the citizens of all the 
States; and no citizen can take part in any movement having 
in view the secession of a State, without, by that act, becom¬ 
ing guilty of rebellion against the United States. The Fede¬ 
ral Government may, therefore, by trying rebellious citizens, 
and punishing them on conviction, effectually check rebellion 
in a State without interfering with the sovereignty of the State 
itself. The poAvers granted to the Federal Government by 
the Constitution, to make laAvs for carrying into execution all 
poAvers vested in the Government of the United States, and 
also to raise armies, and to proAude for calling forth the militia 
to execute the laAvs of the Union and suppress insurrection, 
are very broad, and sutficient for any emergency. 

When, on the other hand, either as the result of actual in¬ 
vasion, of civil Avar, or of any other conceivable cause Avhat- 
soever, the constitutional government of a State becomes dor¬ 
mant, the State itself is not therefore annihilated, but still sub¬ 
sists as a State in the Union. It is the people Avho are the 
State; and the State subsists so long as its people are not, all 


24 


of them, either killed or expatriated.* When the government 
of a State becomes dormant, its powers revert, not to Congress, 
but to the people of the State. The Constitution of the Unit¬ 
ed States nowhere authorizes the Federal G-overnment to in¬ 
herit, under any circumstances, the sovereignty of a State. 
Our Revolutionary fathers never allowed that the Sovereignty 
of a British province could pass, because of the utter subver. 
sion of its government, anywhere else than to the people of 
the province : they never allowed that it could revert to the 
British Parliament. The Declaration of Independence says, 
‘^Tlie King of Great Britain . . . has repeatedly dissolved repre¬ 
sentative houses ; . . . he has refused for a long time, after such 
dissolution, to cause others to be elected: whereby the legisla¬ 
tive powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the 
PEOPLE AT LARGE FOR THEIR EXERCISE; the State remaining, in 
the mean time, exposed to all the dangers of invasion from with¬ 
out, and convulsions loitJnn.^^ Any other principle would have 
vitiated our whole Revolutionary record. It will be observed 
that the States which adopted the Federal Constitution were 
not the State governments, and that the instrument was not 
sanctioned by the State legislatures, but that the people rati¬ 
fied the Constitution themselves (constructively) by their del¬ 
egates in convention. Who are the constitutional people of a 
State whose government is dormant? Obviously, the people 
Avho were constitutionally the people of the State at the mo¬ 
ment its government became dormant, and the persons who 
have, under the constitution of the State, been since virtually 
added to the people. The Federal Government may thin out 
the people of a rebel State by hanging those among them 
who can be proved guilty of treason against the United States; 
but it has no constitutional authority, as the Constitution now 
stands, to meddle in any way with the qualifications of voters 
in any of the States, rebel or other. If the United States, by 
terms of capitulation agreed to on the field of battle, or by 

* This may be illustrated by the case of Massachusetts. It is the people of Mas¬ 
sachusetts who are the State of Massachusetts, the organized government being neither 
the people nor the State. “ The people inhabiting the territory formerly called the 
Province of Massachusetts Bay formed themselves,” not the three departments of 
their government, “into a free, sovereign, and independent body-politic, by the name 
of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.” 


25 


proclamation of amnesty, and acts of pardon, or by injudicious 
legislation, tie their own hands, so that they cannot punish 
rebels, they act within the unquestionable limits of their own 
sovereignty; but they cannot, by merely abandoning their 
authority to punish rebels lawfully, acquire a right either to 
punish rebels unlawfully, or to coerce States. Those rights, 
if acquired at all, must be acquired by another process. The 
fact, that neither the legislatures nor governors of th6 rebel 
States applied to the Federal Government for protection of 
the Southern people against domestic violence, did not relieve 
the United States from their obligation to guarantee to the 
law-abiding people of those States the benefits of the govern¬ 
ments, republican in form, which existed in those States when 
the Rebellion broke out. It was the duty of the United States 
to restore those governments, in their authentic form, at the 
first practicable moment. The United States acquire no rights 
from their failure to do their own duty. Allegiance implies, 
as its correlative, that the subject should be protected from 
violence; and governments which cannot protect their sub¬ 
jects from violence have no right to demand allegiance. Men 
who were conscripted into the rebel armies have a right to 
claim damages from the United States. The United States 
fought out the war against the rebels, not merely to vindicate 
their own authority, but also to fulfil their constitutional duty 
of guaranteeing to all their subjects the benefits of the Federal 
Constitution and laws. They fought to secure to the Southern 
States the free enjoyment of their own constitutions and of the 
Federal Constitution, and not for the purpose of making for¬ 
eign conquests within the limits of their own territories.^' 

In the United States, as a general rule, whatever institution 
or principle prematurely undertakes to make itself national, 
damages itself by its own act; and whatever institution or 
principle wrongfully undertakes to make itself national, de¬ 
stroys itself. There have been, from the beginning, many 
contending parties in the country, and, among them, two which 
demand special notice in this place; the one striving to 
nationalize the institution of slavery, and the other striving to 
make freedom national.” Slavery is guaranteed in the Con¬ 
stitution ; but it is guaranteed vaguely, although effectually, 

I 


26 


by implication, as a local, and not as a national, institution. 
If the advocates of slavery could have obtained the requisite 
number of votes, they would, Avithout doubt, have made slave¬ 
ry national by an amendment of the Federal Constitution ; but 
finding themselves to be, by no means, an overwhelming ma¬ 
jority of the whole country, they endeavored to accomplish 
their purpose by insidiously promulgating and defending an 
interpretation of the Constitution which would have the effect 
to transform the instrument into conformity with their wishes. 
Republishing in the Southern papers every arrogant and in¬ 
sulting thing that was said or printed at the North in dero¬ 
gation of slavery,*they appealed to the Southern sense of pride 
and self-respect, fired the Southern heart,” and created a 
compact local majority in the Southern States in favor of ren¬ 
dering the existence of slavery dominant and eternal. Hold¬ 
ing the balance of power between the historical parties of the 
country, this local and well-disciplined majority, for a long 
time, allowed no President to be chosen by the people who 
was not either a Southern man, or else what they called a 
Northern man with Southern principles.” They obtained also 
the control of Congress, and caused the passage of unconstitu¬ 
tional laAvs for the protection of the slave-system ; such, for ex¬ 
ample, as the Fugitive-slave Law. (We call the Fugitive-slave 
Law unconstitutional, because the clause providing for the de¬ 
livering up of escaped persons held to service or labor, under 
the laws of a State, is in the nature of a compact between the 
States, and dependent on the sole honor of the States for its 
fulfilment, and because the Constitution gives the Federal Gov¬ 
ernment no authority whatever to guarantee the execution of 
the clause.) * The slave-power finally obtained decisions from 
the Supreme Court of the United States, Avhich, if allowed to 
have their natural effect, would have rendered slavery a 
national institution. In gaining the three departments of the 

* Although the slave-power was very impartial in the employment of instruments, 
it used the Whigs even more effectually and freely than it did the Democrats. The 
Fugitive-slave Law was passed under a Whig administration; and was'signed by 
Millard Fillmore, a Whig President. At the Whig Convention of 1852 , Fillmore’s 
policy, the Fugitive-slave Law included, was approved by a vote of 227 against 60 ; 
and a member of his cabinet, known to have approved all his measures, was nominated 
for Vice-President. 


27 


Federal Grovernment, the slave-power literally gained nothing, 
but, on the contrary, sowed the seed of its own destruction. 
The attempted evil was at once effectually checked by what 
really amounted to State interposition, and nullification at 
the North; and so it was again clearly demonstrated by facts 
that the Constitution of the United States cannot be amended 
by the conjoint action of the three departments of the Federal 
Government, but must be amended, if amended at all, by a 
vote of three-fourths of the States. 

The firing of the Southern heart led to offensive and 
domineering conduct on the part of the South ; which, in turn, 
was answered by retaliation on the part of the North. The 
invasion and occupation of Kansas by Border ruflSans led to 
the invasion of Virginia by John Brown. One event followed 
another, until the event came which was predestined from the 
moment when the Southern heart was first ‘‘fired,” — the 
South rose in insurrection. Necessarily, in the nature of 
things, the North being richer, equally brave, and more popu¬ 
lous, than the South, the issue being squarely put, and slavery 
being essentially indefensible in morals, the first gun fired at 
Sumter was the death-knell of the whole slave-system. The 
crime of the South, politically considered, — the one which, in 
the nature of things, was inevitably punished, — was not that 
of slaveholding, but that of “federalism,” in the obnoxious 
sense of the word: it was the criminal attempt to change the 
Constitution of the United States by perversions of the instru¬ 
ment sanctioned by the departments of the Federal Govern¬ 
ment and by brute force. The destruction of slavery, al¬ 
though inevitable, was a part of the punishment only ; and the 
insurrection was not the original crime, but a punishable act, 
naturally consequent upon the crime consummated before the 
insurrection finally broke out. 

On the other hand, the abolitionists were men of quick 
moral perception, who never understood how one man could 
own another man. They were, in great majority, individual¬ 
ists and non-resistants. Regarding the constitutional duty 
of the United States to guarantee each State of the Union 
against domestic violence as an obligation upon Congress to 
vote men and money to shoot, stab, and kill insurrectionary 


28 


slaves, they refused to take office under the Federal Govern¬ 
ment, and affirmed the Federal Constitution to be a covenant 
with hell, and an agreement with death.’^ Regarding the ren¬ 
dition of fugitive slaves as a duty constitutionally obligatory 
on the States, they refused to accept any State office that re¬ 
quired an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. 
Most of them regarded the mere act of voting for Federal or 
State officers as a voluntary complicity with crime. Harm¬ 
less, peaceful, but very fierce in speech, and eloquent, 
looked upon by most persons as men of unsound mind, they 
obtained great influence through the care taken by Southern 
statesmen to ostentatiously notice, and disseminate with well- 
feigned indignant reprobation, abolition speeches and pamph¬ 
lets. Benton warned Calhoun that he was giving importance 
before the country to enthusiasts, who would have no influ¬ 
ence if left to themselves; but Calhoun understood the hand 
he held, and knew liow to play his cards. 

The late war suddenly brought the abolition leaders promi¬ 
nently before the people as far-seeing, neglected prophets, as 
exceedingly powerful and successful agitators, and as guides 
to public opinion. All this was a mistake: the war would 
have occurred, and slavery would have gone under, if no 
American or Massachusetts antislavery society had ever ex¬ 
isted. The abolition movement was an incidental effect of the 
historical public ferment, not a cause of it. The heads of the 
abolition leaders were, however, completely turned by the ex¬ 
pressions of admiration and devotion that were unexpectedly 
showered upon them. It was something novel in their expe¬ 
rience. They were utterly demoralized by their own apparent 
success; and their first actions demonstrated their unworthiness 
of the greatness thrust upon them : they forgot that they were 
peace-men and non-resistants; they forgot that they had been 
acting all along from conscientious motives, outside the Consti¬ 
tution ; and they condescended willingly (whether consciously 
or unconsciously) to play the part of petted, bepraised tools of 
political intriguers, who cared little for either slavery or free¬ 
dom, provided they could lift once again the dishonored ban. 
ner of ‘^Federalism,” and organize the action of the Federal 
Government in the interest of their own ambition, and to the 


29 


confiscation of local liberty. Thus slave-propagandism and 
abolitionism both ended in ‘‘ federalism; ’’ the first in a feder¬ 
alism which tended to the subordination of Northern rights 
and interests to the advantage of the dominant faction at the 
South, and the second in a federalism which tended to the 
subordination of Southern rights and interests to the advan¬ 
tage of the dominant faction at the North. The temporary tri¬ 
umph of the first was followed by a temporary triumph of the 
second; and the effort on both sides has been productive of 
nothing but disaster. 

To show the demoralization of the anti slavery leaders, we 
may remark, that when slavery, by appealing to the sword, 
had mortally stung itself, so that it was virtually, although not 
yet actually, destroyed by its own venom, they allowed the 
federal-abolition influence to force Mr. Lincoln to issue a proc¬ 
lamation liberating slaves, and giving military necessity (a 
term of blasphemy to the antislavery men in the earlier stages 
of their movement) as the motive for his act. Now, such a 
proclamation by the constitutional commander-in-chief, and from 
such a proclaimed motive, was perfectly valid: but it placed 
the liberation of the slaves (where it need never have been 
placed) on the ground of the destruction of private property 
in view of the public good; and the Constitution says ex¬ 
pressly, “ Nor shall private property be taken for public use 
without just compensation.’’ It may be remarked here, that the 
power of the commander-in-chief extends to the liberation of 
slaves, but not to the abolition of slavery. Probably few per¬ 
sons, competent to form an opinion, will maintain that a single 
slave was liberated under Mr. Lincoln’s proclamation who 
would not have been liberated if the proclamation had never 
been issued; but the ferocious passion for federalistic action was 
so urgent, that it was deemed expedient to kill the slave-power 
by an act of federal authority, regardless of consequences, 
before it could have time to die of itself, and for the purpose 
of vindicating federal supremacy over the local rights of the 
States. Thus the United States find.themselves saddled with 
a strictly legal obligation to compensate the former owners of 
the slaves for their liberated chattels, those owners only ex¬ 
cepted who can be convicted of treasonable conduct; for all 

4 


30 


men retain the rights of innocent persons until they are con¬ 
victed of guilt. This claim will certainly be urged; and, if ^ 
not duly honored, will, at least, serve as a makeweight in some 
damaging compromise. The United States, like all other 
moral agents, are bound by their own voluntary acts: they 
cannot lawfully repudiate any of the obligations which they 
have freely taken upon themselves. And this is the curse of 
all “federalism” in the United States, that it exercises itself 
in reckless expenditures of unconstitutional force, all of which 
have to be expiated at the expense of poverty and suffering 
on the part of the people. So long as the Federal Constitu¬ 
tion remains the fundamental law of the land, every unconsti¬ 
tutional act will be followed, sooner or later, by its constitu¬ 
tional compensation of suffering to some one. It is cruel, 
therefore, to attempt the establishment of “ federalism ” in the 
United States, without having first repealed, revoked, or de¬ 
stroyed the Federal Constitution. 

The failure of the abolition leaders to show an elevation of 
character adequate to the part they are called on to play in 
the existing crisis is the great misfortune of the time. If they 
had kept their record clear; if they now retained their ancient 
hostility to violence and perjury; if, while manfully bearing their 
testimony against slavery and oppression, they had preserved 
their skirts from being stained by the blood of war, and had 
refrained from countenancing federal usurpation of rights be¬ 
longing to the States and the people,— they would have been 
able to stand forward now as mediators for the negro, who, 
with the ambition, cupidity, and lust of power of the Northern 
white man pressing him on one side, and the instincts and 
necessities of the Southern white man pressing him on the 
other, is ground between the upper and the nether millstone. 
Unfortunately, the abolition leaders have become, like the rest 
of our public men, mere party politicians. After all, the negro 
has his lot cast in with that of the white man of the South, and 
will have to live side b}^ side with the Southern white man. 

It was neither wise nor humane to widen, as we have done, 
the chasm which separates between the negro and the white 
man of the South; for the chasm will have to be bridged over, 
and the two races will be under the necessity of living together 


31 


upon such terms as they can mutually establish ; and, ultimate¬ 
ly, those terms will be settled independently of any dictation 
exercised by the North. The government of the South by 
the North is too expensive to last long. It would cost noth¬ 
ing at the present time to exert the influences of brotherly love 
and of Christian charity, if we possessed public men compe¬ 
tent to exert a Christian influence. If we had a class of men 
at the North such as the abolitionists might have been at this 
moment if they had not given way to a feminine ferocity, and 
an unchristian zeal for coercion, terms of reconciliation might 
be offered through them to the South, and the whole country 
might be re-united on true Christian grounds, both in spirit 
and in form, and the welfare of the negro might be guaran¬ 
teed. 

The moral weakness manifested by our antislavery reform¬ 
ers seems to have its origin in their unbalanced individualism, 
and their belief in the completeness, and possible independ¬ 
ence and perfection, of the isolated man. The subjective 
divinity of the human soul seems to have been overdone by 
the existing generation. Individualism is good in its place, 
as qualified and balanced by socialism • but the experience of 
the world shows clearly that individualism unbalanced by so¬ 
cialism, and socialism unbalanced by individualism, lead always 
to disastrous social and political crises. The moral and politi¬ 
cal questions of the hour are of complex, and not of simple, 
solution: it is with savages only that moral questions are 
void of complexity. To the true philosopher, society is a liv¬ 
ing being, endowed with an intelligence and an activity of its 
own, governed by special laws which are discoverable by 
observation, and by observation only, and whose existence is 
manifested, not under a material aspect, but in the concert 
and in the close mutual dependence of all the members of the 
social body. The theological name of the universal social 
body is Adam, or the collective man. The dogma of the com¬ 
munity of penalties and sufferings in Adam is as old as theol¬ 
ogy itself. Everywhere the innocent have been seen to suffer 
with the guilty, and the guilty to suffer, not the exact penal¬ 
ty of their crimes (except in the case where judgments issue 
from human tribunals), but the share that falls to them in the 


t 


32 


distribution of the sufierings due to the community. We are 
all mutually dependent, morally, intellectually, and physically, 
upon each other. What we possess, we owe partly to our 
own faculties, but mainly to the education and material aid 
received by us from our parents, friends, neighbors, and other 
members of society. A child exposed, at birth, on a doorstep 
in Beacon Street, and a child exposed on a bleak rock in a des¬ 
olate island, will experience the results of different social con¬ 
ditions. In every country, men begin by taking their religion, 
their intellectual culture, and their aims in life, from the social 
media in which they find themselves. Individual men have, 
to a very limited extent only, the power of determining their 
own destinies. Divine Providence has an important influence 
on human affairs. 

The United States are a collective man, a living creature, 
whose body is composed of the mass of the people, whose two¬ 
fold intelligence (understanding and reason) is organized in the 
two houses of Congress, whose will resides in the Executive 
department, and whose active conscience is organized in the 
Judiciary. In the Old-World popular organisms, the public 
conscience (the Judiciary) have taken cognizance of crimes 
committed by subjects only, and have not been allowed to take 
cognizance of crimes committed by governments; but in the 
United States a new experiment is started, and the organic 
conscience of the country takes cognizance of the constitu¬ 
tional validity of the laws. The government and the laws are 
themselves on trial whenever any individual citizen is tried. 
This is the great original feature of our institutions. 

The cherubim of Mount Zion, the man-headed, lion-headed, 
and eagle-headed bulls of Assyria, and the sphinxes of Egypt, 
were symbols of the collective man, — of social and political 
unity. The enigma of the Greek sphinx was the problem 
of the collective man, — the social and political problem which 
must be solved by the governments of each successive genera¬ 
tion, under penalty of being devoured, in case of incapacity, 
by the ever-progressing revolution. 

We are what we are, as individuals and as a people, not 
solely on account of our own exertions, but also because the 
world was what it was before we were born. The Present, 


f 


33 


says Leibnitz, is the fchild of the Past, and is big with the 
Future. Was it through our exertions that the Hebrew com¬ 
monwealth existed more than four thousand years ago; that 
the ideas and theories on which that commonwealth was 
founded exercised a controlling influence on the formation of 
our institutions; that our fathers (escaping from persecution 
in England in order that they might themselves persecute 
their more consistent brethren, the Baptists and Quakers) 
were thoroughly Semiticized by an intellectual, moral, reli¬ 
gious, and political teaching which had come out of the East? 
Did we create this Western continent? Did we determine 
the remarkable concurrence of circumstances which deter¬ 
mined the motives and conduct of our fathers, which now 
determine ours, and which rendered the foundation and exist¬ 
ence of our institutions possible ? Certainly the Lord had a 
hand in all this! Our fathers, indeed, chose the institutions 
under which we now live ; but they had Hobson’s choice only, 
since no other institutions were, under the circumstances, 
possible. The will of man is no more efficacious, at this mo¬ 
ment, than it has been all along from the beginning. Man pro¬ 
poses, and God disposes. The jubilation of our Fourth-of- 
July orators over our institutions as the creatures of the mere 
will of man, and of popular free choice, is like a grand national 
anthem to the effect, It is not He who made us, but we our¬ 
selves ! ” Mexican political theories are always accompanied 
by Mexican conceit and vainglory. The advanced religion of 
the day is atheism; and its fundamental dogma is this, that God 
is dead. But the advanced religion of the day will have to 
take a step backward; for, contrary to its assertion, God is ‘‘ He 
who only hath immortality.” Our fathers are dead, and are 
buried; in a short time, we also shall be dead and buried: 
but the same Anger of the Almighty which left its trace in 
the legislation of Mount Sinai, and which left its trace in the 
Constitution of the United States, will reveal itself as mould¬ 
ing the destinies of our children. 

It is not true that our institutions were created by the un¬ 
aided will of man, and that the will of man may suffice to 
destroy them: if they are destroyed at all, they will be de¬ 
stroyed at the will of the great Disposer of events, who may 


34 


possibly have formed us as vessels of dishonor, fore-ordained 
to serve as warning examples to peoples more favored by his 
sovereign good pleasure. How’ do we know that our experi¬ 
ment was intended, from the beginning, to be successful ? 

Neither is it true that the elective franchise is a natural right 
of man ; for the elective franchise is a trust, and not a natural 
right of any citizen. Voting is not mentioned, in the Declara¬ 
tions of Rights, as a natural and indefeasible right. The legal 
peoples of the country are mere juries of experts, whose duty 
it is to express the will and defend the interests of the whole 
people, the great majority of whom are never allowed to vote 
at all. The formation of the legal peoples was anterior to the 
formation of our constitutions; for the constitutions, when made, 
were authenticated by the pre-existing legal peoples. The le¬ 
gal peoples came into being mysteriously, providentially, inex¬ 
plicably, and by the act of the Almighty working through his¬ 
torical causes. If any addition is to be made to their numeri¬ 
cal force, the change should take effect in the natural, mysteri¬ 
ous way, through the operation of historical causes, and by the 
vote of the legal peoples themselves. It would be absurd to 
allow Congress to constitute and determine its own constitu¬ 
ency, and thus enable a dominant faction to saddle itself upon 
an unwilling people forever. 

The legal peoples, and not Congress, are the true sovereign. 
It is the freedom of speech and of the press, the enjoyment of 
liberty and property, and the pursuit of happiness, which is 
to be ranked as of natural right, and which is guaranteed as 
such by the State constitutions. If the legal peoples govern 
the governments, public opinion governs the legal peoples; and 
public opinion is formed by women and non-voters, as well as 
by men and voters. What we require in this country is, not 
an increase in the number of voters (although it is supposed 
that no valid objection can be urged against an extension of 
the suffrage, by the proper authority, to all persons competent 
to exercise it to the welfare of themselves and of the non¬ 
voting natural people), but an increase of honesty at Washing¬ 
ton, and, above all. State judges and juries who will decide 
cases triable by State courts according to the constitutions of 
their own States, giving parties before them the full benefit 


of the State Declarations of Rights. It is a matter of astonish¬ 
ment to person^ of a speculative turn of mind to find few (or 
rather no) reports of cases decided on the ground of the 
inalienable and indefeasible liberties guaranteed to the people 
in the Declarations of Rights. The Declarations of Rights 
stands to a great extent, as dead letters on the statute-books: 
they are treated as rhetorical surplusage! 


Printed bt Geo. C. Rand & Avert, 3 Coenhill, Boston. 



















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